27 Comments:

Wow...one day I don't check out the blog and I miss all the tumult. Will I get sued if I say Ms. Greenbaum is nuts? and that your popularity is growing in leaps and bounds, so that more and more people will know about her?

BTW, mom, today at Shabbat lunch I spent much time educating the others about you and your fellow bloggers, whom I only recently found...I may have to quit my job, though to keep up with you all. Great blog!!I may have to start blogging myself...

I dont support this suit nor do i think it will be successful, but there is something to say about cowardly criticizing a named figure while remaining anonymous. Its quite sleazy and un-honorable. Its not as if this was a matter of public safety.

Ortho, if youre going to use real life names and examples, its unfair to hide your own identity. At least this woman had the guts to put her real name behind this suit.

I disagree anon 12:13. Orthomom is following a long and illustrious American democratic history of anonymously criticising public policy and/or officials. Remember: Mrs. Greenbaum CHOSE to run for and be elected into public office. She should be expected to take the heat. Whoever OrthoMom may be, as a citizen, she has every right to criticise Greenbaum's policies without disclosing her real name.

Everyone is patting themselves on the back for supporting freedom of expression.

In the meantime, whither the laws of loshon hora?

While public debate about the policies of elected officials is appropriate and necessary, mudslinging and name-calling should have no place on an orthodox Jewish blog. Political debate about real people must be moderated and treated with the utmost care.

If this frivolous lawsuit has brought you to this realization alone, it would have served its purpose.

lab rab: calling someone bigoted in light of the statement mrs greenbaum had given in om's post in question was not out of line, imho. ms grenbaum said that she would never support paying public school teachers for teaching private school students. that statement has nothing to do with the legality of public school teachers teaching private school students, as there are many instances in which such an action would be permitted by law. some commenters found her statement categorically denying any aid to private school students when when it might be allowed by law to be a show of bigotry. this article in which ms/ greenbaum was quoted was reported in the paper. now how exactly does any of this fall under the tenets of loshon hara or motzi shem ra? it certainly does not fall under the category of mudlinging, imho.

I am wondering if anyone just stopped to think for a minute. Is it possible she just wants to know who orthomom is. Remember everyone knows she can't sue. She can get the name of the blogger. I really think that is what she is trying to do. Smart, let us give her credit.

Anon 9:24, you make a number of extremely questionable statements. I'll parse as many of them as I can bear to.

1) "PG is secular. OM and the gang are orthodox. The "issue" might not be a secular/ortho issue but that does not avoid the sickening reality that orthobloggers are "going after" someone who is not religious.I dont care if the issue is baseball, it is still NOT a Kiddush Hashem"

As far as I can tell, PG is the one who started "going after" people with a lawsuit that amounts to nothing more than a "you hurt my feelings" argument. That said, I think YOU miss the point when you ignore the constitutional issue present here. The overwhelmingly orthodox support for OM stems from the fact that her subject matter and readership happens to be orthodox. If they were attacking PG en masse for her school board position (and most of the bloggers rallying to OM's defense here were not even aware of the issue of the 5 towns board until friday when this story broke) you could make the argument that this was an orthodox lynch mob. However, that is not the case here. What you have instead is a non-blogger (PG) treading on the collective rights of bloggers everywhere, and a response by the blogging public - who in this case coincidentally happen to be orthodox - attacking such unconstitutional and orwellian behavior. If OM goes to the EFF (known champions of online free speech) or the ACLU and they defend her cause (which they would), are these ALSO orthodox institutions attacking a secular cause? I think not.

2) "Chilul Constitution,Bloggers Rights what ever you want to call it , it is still NOT a Kiddush Hashem."

Last I checked, the kiruv/no chillul hashem clauses you blithely throw about do not prohibit you from defending yourself. Unless you beleive that OM should throw down her arms, accept all of PG's terms and cease and desist all criticism in the vain hope of possibly making PG orthodox (for that matter, why should we care whether or not she's orthodox - I dont care how she spends her shabbat or accepts services paid for by her tax dollars, as long as she doesnt tread on my right to spend mine or recieve my fair share equally. To insist on HER being orthodox - which is the defiinition of kiruv - implies that you feel like there's something wrong with the way she currently lives her life. Which I certainly dont, but you imply you do. Perhaps YOU'RE the religious colonialist here?), OM and all the other bloggers here who are threatened by PG's unjustified suit are perfectly entitled to defend their position. Orthodox does not equal pushover, nor should it.

3) "I trust the legal system to take care of up holding the Constition.The constition doesn't need a bunch of Orthobloggers to defend it. "

Well, in that case, I'll call the ACLU right away and tell them that all their work is unneccesary. After all, the constitution is certainly rich enough (it WAS written by a bunch of old white landed dead guys, right?) to pay for its own legal fees. Actually, the point here is that without motivated interest groups standing up for their rights, there would be no constitutional protection. Ultimately, PG's foolish because she has taken the side of an issue where as the besieged secular power she previously had the widespread support of the general public and now, because she's opposing basic legal and constitutional rights of expression, she's become the enemy of ultra liberal (and secular) organizations like the EFF and the ACLU. And if she wants to sue me for saying so, be my guest.

I must add that it seems to me based on my limited exposure to this issue (and I must add that had I not seen this story on canonist, I'd never have known about it) that the "side" of Greenberg and her supporters seems to be making far more specious, ad hominem, vitriolic, and ultimately silly arguments (not to mention the fundamental fact that her foolish lawsuit is what started this entire go around) than OM and her supporters.

It seems to me, that if the PG's of the world want to be taken seriously (about now, I dont know her, but I don't think I take her very seriously as a public figure at all based both on her actions and on the inane posts of her supporters) they should work on expressing their points cogently, civilly and relevantly. OM certainly does. And short of the initiating "ugly/bigot" comment, at least half of which was equally inane and not taken particularly seriously by any of the frequent posters here, or so it seems, OM and her incidental supporters appear much better advocates of their cause than do Legaleagle and his anonymous ilk.

For Google, defending this suit is not even a rounding error on their balance sheet. I'm sure they have staff attorney's that will file a motion to dismiss at virtually no marginal cost to them. I seriously doubt that PG will succeed in unearthing Mom's name.

Greenbaum has my respect and the respect of many more than you think. Your responses on a blog site mean diddly squat. The court will decide this matter, not you and not some rabbinical court. For your information, whether or not Ms. Greenbaum is a public figure as per Sullivan v. NY Times, the comments made about her were indeed malicious and are only protected from a libel lawsuit in the shadow of a beer garden in Munich.

"Anon 12:13;Am I the only one that finds it quite ironic to see such a scathing attack against anonymous posting, by..... an anonymous commenter! Thanks for the laugh! "

You probably are the only one who finds it funny because you are clearly retarded. If you re-read what i wrote you would see there is nothing ironic about it. Either that or you dont know what ironic means. I'll give you a hint, i never used anyone's real identity.

"there is something to say about cowardly criticizing a named figure while remaining anonymous."

The people who think there is any substance to this so called lawsuit are silly clowns. They will all eventually be shown the door when it is time for them to run for the board. They are too silly to be board members.

Om lives in Cedarhurst.Om davens at the red shul.Om has 4 kids: Boy, girl, boy, unknown.Om send her boys to Darchei.Om sends her girl(s) to Tag.Om takes a train to the city for work.Om is some kid of professional (lawyer? accountant?)